As networked devices have become cheaper and more capable, the market for these devices has exploded. Further, users are demanding greater speeds, better performance, and seamless operation from these devices. User demand for better QoS and high network availability coupled with device interoperability is driving the development of devices with multiple network interfaces, and standards for integrating multiple interfaces into a single home area network. Proliferation of devices and network interfaces means that power consumption of the network interface becomes an increasingly relevant concern for device owners and operators.
Power consumption has several negative user-visible effects, some of which include: it is a significant contributor to the long-term cost of ownership of a device; it reduces battery life and increases the cost and complexity of the power supply; and it can raise device temperature, potentially increasing design size and complexity to accommodate more powerful cooling mechanisms. Device power consumption can be reduced by reducing effective clock speed and by disabling components of the device for the period in which they are not in use. These techniques are more difficult to apply to the networking layer of a given device, as designs often assume that network requests will be unpredictable.